Take Turns Doing the Hard Jobs

Today, we decided to tackle the kitchen flooring. We are removing two layers of vinyl(?) flooring that apparently were stuck on with super, gorilla glue. This is back-breaking work and progress is very slow. Our friend is planning to drop by a tool that will help make this less miserable, but in the meantime, we have discovered what works and what doesn’t.

I discovered a “shovel” of sorts in the garage corner which I thought would be dandy to use. It is thin at the end and I visualized shoveling whole tiles at one shove. Ha, ha, ha. Meanwhile, my son took the crowbar and hammer approach. When I saw the progress he was making, I dug through the tools for a sledge-hammer. I handed it to him with a big smile. One whack and we knew we found a winning combination!

We started out with great spirits. My son, using the crowbar/sledge-hammer combo, and myself using the crowbar/hammer combo. After about 15 minutes, I was really done. My back hurt and my arms felt like noodles. I decided to do the final vacuum and tamping of the staple ends in our front room. My son stuck with the floor removal for another 30 minutes. Then he needed a break. So I took over the floor removal and sent him to the garage to work on preparing the cabinetry we will be selling.

All day long, we took turns doing the hardest job (floor removal) and finding other smaller, easier jobs that needed doing (removing baseboard, fixing cabinetry). If one of us found a better way to do something, we shared it. For example, I discovered a super easy way to remove staples from the front of our old cabinetry. I turned that job over to my son and headed back to the floor removal.

I share all of this to say that I think in every part of life, we should take turns doing the hard jobs. I am not sure that I have done this for most of my life, but it just makes sense. Working on a project is so much nicer when everyone involved is willing to do the hard stuff and not just push it onto the “new” guy or the lowest paid worker. I also think we should always share with others any information that is helpful or makes things easier. I know that not everyone does this in life, but we should.

Well, we still have about half the kitchen to go, but the great news is that my husband just got home. Oh, the fun he will have learning the crowbar/sledge-hammer combo!